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Nightmare Night (song)
"Nightmare Night, Part 1" is a song by the Cloudsdale synthpop band the ALPS. It was written by Naz, with some collaboration from Mic the Microphone. It was released on the album of the same name in 2014. Composition Naz dashed off the song in one night, and brought it in for comments the following morning. As he described in his 2030 Playboy interview, "the next morning I brought in the song … 'cuz there was a little competition between Frosty and I as to who got the opening track." The song was not written with Mic the Microphone in mind, but after the ALPS' former bandmate offered to sing some tracks for the next album, he was chosen to sing the opening track. Mic also wrote some lyrics to better suit himself. The song has become strongly associated with Halloween, something Naz had set out to do. In the same Playboy interview, Naz describes: "no one had really made a Halloween song... there were Christmas songs, but no Halloween songs. I thought, I might as set the precedent with this song. And also, we had this sort of mysterious aura lingering around us from Rainbow Factory, so it only seemed natural." The song is one of the only songs from the album that was not written during, or influenced by, their voyage to the human world. On 16 April 1964, the ALPS gathered at Studio 2 of the Xat Studios and recorded "Nightmare Night, Part 1". It took them less than five hours to polish the song for its final release, eventually selecting the ninth take as the one to be released. One journalist described a memorable taxi ride the morning the song was recorded: "One day I picked Naz up in a taxi and took him to Xat Studios for a recording session. The tune to the song 'Nightmare Night' was in his head, the words scrawled on a birthday card from a fan: 'With a royal farewell,' it said, 'And a trip down to hell …' Rather a dark line about the princess, I said. 'OK,' he said cheerfully and, borrowing my pen, instantly changed it to: 'With a royal farewell/And an animate spell/You won't have long to prepare.' The other ALPS were there in the studio. Naz sort of hummed the tune to the others – they had no copies of the words or anything else. Five hours later I was none the wiser about how they’d done it but the track was made – and you can see the birthday card in the Cloudsdale Library." In the Associated Press report, another journalist described his recollection of what happened. At 8:30 in the morning, "There were Naz and Frosty with synths at the ready and all the lyrics scribbled on matchbook covers. They played it and the next night recorded it." Some accounts of the event have Mic present at the session, while others claim that Mic's vocal parts were recorded at a later date. Release and reception "Nightmare Night, Part 1" was released on 10 July 2014, with the album of the same name. Both the album and song were released by Rainbow Records. Naz has later expressed his dissatisfaction with the song: "I think the lyrics were lazy, not my best." He also said that giving the song to Mic was a "mistake". Frosty has echoed the same sentiment, but the song continues to be a fan and pop culture favorite. The album was titled after the song at the last second, as the album previously had the working title of Building Worlds. The change was explained by Frosty: "We felt that more of the album had the darker feel of Nightmare Night than the lighter feel of Building Worlds, so we changed it. I think either title is a mistake, we should have thought of something else." Personnel *Naz – lead vocals (middle eight), piano, lead synthesizer, sound effects *Rainbow Speed – synthesizer *Frosty – bass synthesizer *Teal – drums *Mic the Microphone - lead vocals Part 2 "Nightmare Night, Part 2" is a modified remix of the opening song at a faster tempo with heavier instrumentation, similar to the reprise of Beyond Her Garden. The ALPS realized towards the deadline of a summer release that they were two songs short, so Frosty created the remix while Naz created Tough Luck. Part 2 was remixed almost entirely by Frosty himself in one recording session on 31 May 2014. While the first version of the song had stayed largely in the key of G major (except for transient modulation to F and perhaps C in the bridges), the reprise starts in F and features a modulation, to G. The main songwriting credit was given to Frosty by Naz after they had realized that Frosty only had two other main songwriting credits on the album. Naz has stated that calling the song a "Part 2" is "wrong", saying that the song "adds nothing, lyrically, to part one." However, Naz did say that he preferred Part 2 to Part 1. Frosty called the song "a perfect example of filler", adding that he was "glad that they abandoned the practice of two-parters" after the album. Personnel *Naz – lead vocals (middle eight), lead synthesizer, sound effects *Rainbow Speed – synthesizer *Frosty – bass synthesizer, synthesizer, remixing *Teal – drums *Mic the Microphone - lead vocals